from Oct 3, 2013

Trying to dry out after my 17.6 mile romp today. Unapologetically it is the conditions do the trail that determined how far you can go on any particular day. Because I got to this shelter I'll have left white crane back a half day he'll be spending the night at standing bear hostel. I was sorely tempted to stay there too. It would be a very co place to come back to. It's on a road but I don't have a clue which one but it's about 200 yards off the aT. So there's the white farmhouse sitting in the middle of the woods on a creek. Surrounded by about a dozen smaller buildings made out of home sawn lumber or maybe recycled lumber. The first thing you come to when you turn in the driveway is the bearded shirtless dude holing a bud light who wants to show you around. He's living in one of the little cabins over the creek, the other building over there is the privey. Right hare is the. Bunkhouse. There's bunks for maybe 16 people and right in the middle is barrel stove ready. To provide heat. There's a porch on either end. On one end there's a derelict old corn busker a few other rusty farm implements and a garden of impatiens all planted in hiking shoes slowly turning to dirt or at least moss. On the other end there's some home made sitting benches and a respectable collection of contemporary and not so contemporary books and magazines . There's a couple cabins scattered about for any hardy couples that may find their way here. The one I saw from the road on the way in looked like a comfy tree house with a sitting area below. The building behind the bunk house was the fully furnished kitchen dining room . Again more books and magazines, photo, and sombreros nailed to the ceiling. Oh and there seemed to be a few guitars lying about I guess just to play if the mood strikes you. Attached to this is the laundry and where you can find clean towels for the showers which are in the next building over. Back here all laundry is done by hand- your hand But there is an electric cloths dryer. Things are hard to dry otherwise. There was an Australian fellow loitering about the kitchen and just about to sit down and eat his lunch, everyone cooks their own food. Of open faced tomato and mushroom sandwich. Oh, and the last building on the tour, if you don't count the front porch of the farmhouse where everyone was sitting was the " store" it had just about anything you might want from earplugs to frozen pizza ( that you could cook back at the kitchen) popsicles to spam. I had both. I also picked up a package of ramen and took it over to the kitchen to cook for lunch. I had a soda a banana and packed up enought supplies to get me to hot springs. This would be a fun place to come back to. I think the sign said there was live music one night.
I keep meeting SOBO's they are an interesting crowd. Usually traveling by themselves or in pairs. One fellow I talked to today said the two big challenges left for him were hiking out of the Fontana dam and hiking out of the NOC. Heck I have done those! And one of them in rain! Everyone is concerned about what the shutdown smokies means for them- I suspect very little. What's reall interesting is they all seem to know who is one or two days ahead of them on the trail and who is one or two days behind them on the trail, even to the approximate hour!
To the person thrash seem encouraged to meet someone who started at springer mtn
-83.2884°, 35.6749°

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Day23 Retro Entry: Sep 29, 2013

I met up with my first thru hiker today. About 1000 he was sitting down to breakfast at a shelter I was going to pass. He said his name was mercury and he believed he was second in line for the SOBO's (south bounders) these are the folks that started on Katahdin in May. Mercury told me he thought there was a fellow in front of him who was going to set some sort of "unassisted" AT SOBO traverse. He was second and there were two strong fellows coming up behind him, Rooster and Danko. Mercury had an advanced alcohol stove that had a simmer adjustment. There was a band around the vent holes of your basic cat food can stove and the threads of a Sheetrock screw would adjust how tight the band closed around the vents. Anyway he could now simmer food and not just turn the heat on or off. He told me that he had begun training for this trip a month before he started. He said he was doing 20 mile days. I am not convinced that a near weightless stove compensates for the fuel you'll have to carry and then the amount of heat you get out of it. I can heat a cup of water in no time. As I headed out for derricks knob shelter I run into Rooster (no Danko - was he off peeing?)
At Derrick knob I met Troy and mike and a bunch of other boys. Most of them are heading into a historic "cove". Sort of a old timely settlement. I wonder what they are going to do when they get there and find everything shut down. One of these homeboys came back from getting water and said there a bear in a tree down there. It's about dusk and we all grab our headlamps and traipse off to see a bear. Turns out it was a turkey up there "fixin" to go to sleep. I think that was the same fellow that really has a snoring problem, a real snoring problem. One of the other fellows was a manager at peddlers in gatlinburge and he said we could all come in for steak dinners and he would buy dessert .

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Day Sixteen Entry: Sep 26, 2013

Wesser Bald. I didn't wake up in Wayah Bald shelter thinking I'd make it all the way to the Nantahala Outdoor Center but by 6 pm I had covered 16.5 miles. Making sure that every blaze I saw was that happy little white AT blaze. There were some ups and downs and the Wesser bald fire toweresque observation tower was a real up hill run but the views were amazing. Lately I've gotten to the tops of three balds and have been fogged in --not this time. Since my little stick pick contraption has weaseled out of all the stuff I've sent home I thought I would try to do a 360 video just like in the commercial. Not so much. I tend to fall back on the panoramic sew three shots together of my camera. It was hard to walk past the Wesser bald leanto at mile 10.2 but I pushed on. I walked right past the Rufus Morgan shelter. I had wanted to at least see the place since I knew the guy's story but I didn't even see the blue blaze for a turnoff. At one point I did see the roof to the "mouldering privy" but that was it. Mouldering priveys are the only thing I've seen so far for out houses. They are usually a platform sometimes with a roof over them and under the platform usually about 4 x4x4, chicken wire and all above ground is where everything goes from the seat above. They ask you to throw some dried leave and twigs down after you are done but that's about it. There are usually barrels of leaves and such for your convenience. An above ground out house. The smell was not noticeable at all - really! So I get into the NOC about six and they have a bunk in the overflow room. Something about a herd of middle schoolers coming in. My bunk is about a half mile away and up about 1000 feet. I couldn't believe it. Course it was the17$ variety ANSI was gratefull to be on a mattress, never mind that it was 2 incessant of old egg crate. I had a shower, about ¼ mile from my bunk, put on my cleanest cloths sans underwater and hurried back to the restaurant for a burger before it closed at 8. On the way back I ran into Steve. He had just tumbled in, heading sobo. **He was looking for a bunk. I said everything is closed but I have the key to the overflow room that still has 3 open bunks
So the NOC recently played host to an international freestyle kayaking thing. The river runs right thru the middle of "campus" and the gates were still up. The AT goes right across the bridge right in the middle of it all. There are zip lines, xcountry bikes, rafting all sort of stuff almost Disney-esq. I decide tomorrow will be my first real zero day. And I'll figure out if I make Fontana dam in two hard days or three easy days. Relatively speaking.
Did I mail this to you????
70° Cloudy
Nantahala National Forest, Franklin, NC, United States

**sobo = South Bound

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